Fearlessness & Fulfillment

Hi! My name is Kir (it rhymes with “beer”), and I am a Mortician. I say that with a capital ‘M’, because not only am I a funeral director but also an embalmer with licenses in multiple states. Also, I have been to hell and back so many times in the process of becoming the very capable woman in a black suit telling you her story today, that I should have a punch card where the 10th trip is free! But trust me, it has all been so worth it and I would not change a thing.

There are days that I do wish I were not as complicated a human being as I am. Make that months, no, years! I’m not saying that I am difficult to get along with, not at all. Let’s just say that I am incredibly easy-going on the surface, but am a bubbling, boiling volcano of energy and fearlessness in my gooey insides. Let me tell you, it would be so much easier to maybe make a living selling the art I make in my off-time or return regularly to working in bars as I did for decades. Then maybe I could have a much more normal life. Maybe? But I know it would not be enough for me at the end of the day. What really fulfills me other than my dedication to my family and other fellow humans, is being the girl who takes the proverbial ‘road less traveled’. I absolutely delight in taking on challenges that may terrify others. Because why not? Being able to utilize my natural lack of fear for the betterment of others is what brings me such a remarkable sense of fulfillment. Both positively and negatively, I am driven internally to take on challenges that may seem impossible. Please, hear me out. I do not compete with anyone but myself and I have found over the years that I am my own relentless opponent.

I call it “dropping the ‘M Bomb” when someone asks me what I do for a living. I then step back for a second to gauge their reactions. Most people’s eyes become huge like twin super moons in the night sky, though a handful of individuals do look more alarmed than intrigued. These are the folks who I treat the most gently because I recognize and respect others’ fear of death. I am not here to scare anyone. Educate them, sure, but never scare them. Once I have determined which direction the conversation is going to take, I brace myself for what’s coming next: The inevitable rapid-fire line of questioning. “What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever had to do?”, “What do you do with the blood?”, “What if they don’t fit into the casket? Do you cut off their legs?”, and my favorite, “How on earth did you get into THAT line of work?”

My answer to all those questions in order are, “You don’t REALLY want to know”, “It gets flushed down the plumbing just like anything else.”, “We most certainly do NOT cut anyone’s legs off.”, and “If you have time for a story, I have the time to tell it.”

Let me start at the beginning. I come from an absolutely enormous family. I am the youngest of 8 children from the first batch, and the eldest of the other two batches. So, I have Middle Child Syndrome, obviously. All joking aside, I am adopted and have the pleasure of being involved with as many of my living relatives, by law, by blood and by chosen, as possible. A great deal of my family is in the medical industry with a few First Responder types peppered throughout. Dad who raised me was an old country doctor and a WWII veteran. The man really instilled the work ethics and patriotism of his generation in me, because I hardly ever left his side as a child. He was my first Best Friend. It was when we lost him and three other immediate family members within four years, that I became very acquainted with death, and naturally, with funeral directors. And those funeral directors and morticians became my rockstars in a sense. Suddenly, I wanted to be them! I was in art school at the time and had already spent many years as a bartender when I finally made the leap to mortuary school instead. I am so glad that I did.

Many people, some of my closest friends and family, were both shocked and skeptical that the flaky baby of the family would go out for such an emotionally and physically demanding career change. It was then that I discovered that I am the type of person that if you tell me that I can’t do something, I will find a way to make it happen just to prove to both you and me that I can do anything. I took to mortuary school and my grueling apprenticeship like a fish does to water. Even the embalming part, the part I was most nervous about and thought maybe I’d just want to get through just the cases that were required for school so I could just work with helping the families. I wanted to serve and help them at one of the most difficult times in their lives and was willing to walk through fire to be licensed to do so. Walk through fire, learn to embalm. Made sense to me at the time.

But then, wouldn’t you know? The funniest thing happened; I fell absolutely head over heels in love with the ancient practice of embalming. The anatomy, the chemistry, and the art of making a deceased human look their best just so their families can have a healthy psychological experience and opportunity to say a final goodbye. It all still just blows me away to be able to give that to them even to this day, I’m really humbled by it all. Another one of the questions many ask me is, “How did you go from being a career bartender to becoming a Mortician?” My answer to that comes out in the form of a good-natured joke. I tell them that both jobs require that you see people at their best, their worst, and their strangest…and at the end of the day, you’re still filling someone up with fluids if you play your cards right!

I’d like to take this opportunity to clarify that embalming is not gross. Well, not in general, anyway. When I have a difficult case, I just remind myself that each person was somebody’s baby at some time and my compassion just takes over really, allowing me to push through what many folks would not have the stomach to handle. When I discovered this neat ability of mine, an idea began to form. ‘How else can I help people? Is there a higher level to what I do now?’ A little research was all it took to set me on the next leg of my journey and have me setting new personal goals at a break-neck speed.

As of right now, I am licensed in my home state of Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania, with my sights set on New Jersey and Indiana. No kidding! And for my next trick, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am seeking a bachelor’s degree in Emergency Disaster Management. This is so I can become what is called a Disaster Mortician, or DMORT for short. I achieve this level of academia, and I become a prime candidate for working with FEMA and Homeland Security amongst other Federal entities. If there is a natural disaster of incredible magnitude (think Hurricane Katrina) or even a not-so natural one, (the needless loss of life at Pulse, the nightclub in Central Florida so many years back), the government sends people like me into the fray to help lock-down, organize and set up a recovery plan for rather violent and incomprehensibly difficult emergency situations. They send police, firefighters, EMT/paramedics, Medical Examiners and morticians who have been specially trained beyond their normal job descriptions to handle the grisliest scenarios that can occur on American soil and occasionally abroad. All I have to say to that is sign me up! Actually, I am signed up. My classes for this degree program start in July and I am over the moon with excitement and anticipation for all the new things I am about to learn. This makes the possibilities for helping people and serving my country nearly endless. Not bad for a flaky artist who hates bi-partisan politics, (Elections give me the creeps more than any dead body ever could.) but loves her country dearly. I am here for the sake of the people, not the game.

When I daydream about the future now, I envision ridiculous things. Ridiculous things that are scenes straight out of overly dramatic action films, I’m not going to lie. I am nervously giggling to myself as I write this portion, but I just must share. For instance, there is the one daydream where I arrive at the epicenter of a natural disaster. I’m wearing all black tactical gear with a DMORT patch on me and badge at my hip, aviator glasses covering half my face, my long, black hair whipping in the wind…and my trusty companion at my side, a German shepherd Cadaver Dog, named Trocar. It’s then that I hear someone behind me say, “Oh, no. They called HER in. This can’t be good.” I told my dear friend Kaz, who was Ground Zero NYPD and about as gentle a soul as you will ever meet, this daydream after we finished working a particularly complicated funeral one day. I felt embarrassed sharing it with him, but he got this huge, goofy grin on his face before he said, “I keep telling the bosses that you’re fearless. You step up when no one else wants to. And you know what, kid? I can totally see it. What’s more is we need you.” I got really choked up and hugged him so hard then. In my heart, I promised both of us that I was going to chase this dream down like a lioness does an antelope on the plains.

See, fulfillment means something different to every single person. That’s just more of the spice of life, making each of us that much more unique. And I know my sense of fulfillment has an element of danger to it that many would not be comfortable with, but that’s the whole point. I will do it because others cannot. I will keep pushing the envelope and use this odd trait of fearlessness to protect and help as many people as I can and take as much of the pain and loss of death from their shoulders as possible, hopefully in one of the biggest ways imaginable. I don’t know about you, but that feels both incredibly fulfilling and humbling to me, therefore it is a perfect fit.

Capitalizing on what I do and what I am passionate about is absolutely possible. My mentor is what is called a Restorative Arts Surgeon. Carrie is the highest echelon of embalmers, essentially. Basically, a person could get run over by a semi and she’d still be able to put them back together again. Carrie speaks nationally at conventions as well as is a frequent guest on radio shows and podcasts. Heck, I’ve been asked to speak at conventions as far away from my own industry as the InfoSec community, and speaking engagements sell tickets. “We have a mortician speaking? Whoa! Sign me up for that talk!” There are celebrity directors and morticians, such as Caleb Wild and Caitlin Doughty, who the public clamors to buy their books and follow their social media religiously, and that alone is an advertising goldmine.

Bottomline, the World wants more information on death. They are fascinated, intrigued, self-educating…as for what platform could a financial backing partner or marketing firm use to monetize this need for more death education, choose any of the following as a jumping off point: An app to help start the legal process of making funeral arrangements and handling liabilities and legalities for those who are not quite ready to sit down with a funeral director yet. Speaking engagements, particularly after book deals. Everyone loves a good behind the scenes at the funeral home show. All of this has been done in pieces here and there, but not pulled together as a single, branded franchise. And certainly not with the added aspect of FEMA and Homeland Security events, granted, the portions that the public is allowed to be privy to. I also am not just campaigning for my own ability to share and educate on such elevated levels, as I feel this would need to involve a core team of professionals, each of whom has a slightly different skillset to bring to the table.

To be able to share our knowledge and help people in their darkest hours, with such a potentially immense audience, it would be like nothing that has ever been attempted before. Honestly, just the attempt alone would garner such respect and a good-willed reputation for the backing partners, as they become associated with such a humanitarian effort. That is what all of this is about, the trickiness of being human, right? We all share three major aspects as humans: We all have to be born. We all have to live our lives the best we know how. And we all have to die. Death and grief are merely part of our jobs as being human. But we don’t all have to be so afraid of the unknown, do we? Education of any type helps to eliminate many of those fears one by one. What a fascinating and most likely lucrative education it could be, not to mention the fulfillment it would bring to those in the position of being the educators. But to try something of this magnitude with such long-reaching benefits would still take time, money, hard work…and more than just a little fearlessness, wouldn’t you agree?